​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

To the South Bank's Alchemy festival on Sunday - a celebration of South Asian culture, with a Bollywood dance teach-in (phenomenally popular), and food stalls which sell the sort of stuff you wish Indian restaurants would.

Between us, we managed a papri chaat, a chole bhatura and a masala dosa. Grand!

The craft exhibits in the Royal Festival Hall were greatly depleted however, thanks to HMG. Seven of the stalls - that's more than half the total - had notes saying that the artists had been 'delayed due to visa'. Alchemy is now approaching its half-way mark, so I suspect these guys are never going to make it to the South Bank. A pity!